Surprise will be my last emotion, not fear.

Any marriage worth the name is no better than a series of beginnings - many of them abortive.

Truth is the only good and the purest pity. ... Men lie for profit or for pity. All lies turn to poison, but a lie that is told for pity or shame breeds such a host of ills that no power on earth can compass their redemption.

Fear is the deep motive of abstract art - fear of a repellent civilization which is dominated by the power of things. ... who can be surprised if, more sensitive than the others, the artist is terrified by the power things have acquired over us?

The older I grow the more sharply I mistrust words. So few of them have any meaning left. It is impossible to write one sentence in which every word has the bareness and hardness of bones, the reality of the skeleton.

You can't argue with a raging want. You can, but it is useless.

Sadistic literature is not only inhumane. It is anti-human.